


i'm watching us fall

by howveryzoe



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Abortion mention, Anna is a lesbian, F/F, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Modern AU, anna and georg are siblings, anna is very jewish, i hope melchior gabor chokes on a dick and dies, i said i would never write another sa fic but here i am, they live in nyc, this is so gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 15:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11107017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howveryzoe/pseuds/howveryzoe
Summary: In the middle of a cold night in early Spring, Anna finds Wendla





	i'm watching us fall

**Author's Note:**

> So background: they live in NYC  
> Idk what else there is to say I'm really proud of this mess

It's nearly one o’clock and her mom had promised her she could clock in at twelve and she’s furious. It's all Georg’s fault. Her idiot brother was mad he was being made to stay inside and study for his AP Calculus test and he took it out on her. Told their mom she had gotten high at Ilse Neumann’s rave last week and now he was doing extra hours as punishment. 

“You're gonna end up getting arrested Anna!” Her mother had yelled. But the punishment was far looser than it could've been. So now she's waiting tables far into the night while Georg sits at the bar and annotates his notes. 

It's stupid that their parents even keep this place open so late, Anna thinks as she carries a plate to be washed in the kitchen. Maybe one or two people have wandered in since the clock struck midnight. But the old Jewish delicatessen had been in the family since her zayde came here from the old country and bought it with his life’s savings. They had tradition, her father reminded her as she stared at the fading photos of dead celebrities on the walls, and part of that tradition was being open 24 hours.

So the drunks can stumble in and try to grab my ass at 2 am, Anna had grumbled, but he had smiled and adjusted her apron. Michael, her cousin, would be coming soon to relieve her but she still had hours. He said he was studying but she knew he was out with his girlfriend. Saw it on snapchat. 

“You know I’m not gonna forgive this easily.” She tells him as she wipes down his table. He smiles and pushes his glasses up to his nose. 

“Missed a spot.” She flips him off and heads to the register. 

It's then that she hears the jangling noise of the door opening. She turns her head expecting to see some old man stumbling in. Instead it's a rarity: a teenaged girl.

And not just any teenaged girl, Wendla Bergmann.

She's wearing a sundress that's covered in dirt and her hair is a matted mess. Mascara runs down her cheeks. Her eyes are downcast and she has no shoes. Anna and Georg exchange a look. Wendla is a good girl, sweet, straightlaced, dreamy and existential at times, but never a wild child. She isn't this mess.

He raises his eyebrows and she shakes her head, indicating to her brother that she knows nothing.

She and Wendla haven't even spoken in months. Their friend group sort off splintered in Sophomore year. Thea off to marching band, Greta to track, Martha to key club, Wendla to the hipster poet circles, and Ilse to infamy. 

And Anna? Anna’s just here.

Wendla sinks into an empty vinyl booth, her shoulders slump and for a moment Anna thinks she’ll pass out. Then she shakes her head slightly and looks up at the clock on the wall, frowning.

After a minute Georg turns to her again, locking eye contact.

“Take her order!” He mouths silently and she nods, shrugging. What else is there to do?

Anna shuffles awkwardly over to the table, clicking and unclicking her pen with anxiety. She thinks she stands there for a good moment before finally Wendla looks up. Her dark eyes strange and weighed down.

“Oh,” is all the other girl says and Anna looks down curiously. “Hello Anna.”

“Hey, can I take your order?” Anna asks quietly, unsure of what else to say. Wendla laughs softly and lifelessly, more of a breath than anything else.

“I don’t know. Will you kick me out if I don’t buy anything?” Her voice is slightly pleading and Anna looks to Georg for confirmation. He shrugs.

“No, but I’m gonna get you some water and some chicken soup, kay?” Anna says firmly, doing her best to take control. “You look like you need it.”

“I don’t have much money on me.” Wendla says apologetically. Now Georg chimes in.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll spot you.” He says and Wendla jumps hearing his voice.

“Thank you.” Wendla responds hoarsely and both nod. Anna stands there for a second, unsure of what to do next, but then heads into the kitchen to pour her a glass of water and put some of their Bubbe’s chicken soup in the microwave. The stuff is sacred but she counts this as an emergency. Something clearly isn’t right.

When she gets back Georg is bent again over his books, even more concentrated than before and Wendla has slumped down more in her seat, head resting against the red plastic back. Anna places the bowl and the glass in front of her gently. Wendla looks startled but then looks up gratefully.

“I didn’t know you both worked here. I just slipped into the first place I saw open.” She says it almost apologetically and Anna smiles.

“We don’t really work here. It’s our family’s place. We’re unpaid labor basically.” She hopes Wendla will crack a smile at the joke but nothing. Anna waits for a moment and then gets up her courage to ask the next thing. “Can I sit, no one’s here and you look like you might want company…?”   
Wendla looks confused and then nods after a second, eyes fixed on her chicken soup. Anna carefully slides into the booth.

“So, how have you been? I feel like we haven’t talked since we were freshman.” Wendla looks up and meets Anna’s gaze. Anna never noticed how pretty her brown eyes were, even now in their distressed and red state. The way the fluorescent lights catch them it’s like a comet shooting across a night sky. 

“Oh, I guess I’ve been fine. Busy, preparing for college and writing and stuff.” Wendla tells her and Anna nods sympathetically.

“Me too, Junior year is such a bitch.” Anna can’t help but notice Wendla still looks uninterested and distant. “I saw that video of you reciting that slam poem on facebook. The one your mom posted. It was really good. Touched me.” 

“Thanks, I don’t know if it was that great though. I mean it was whatever.” Wendla says awkwardly.

“It was better than Melchior’s poem. Where does he come up with that bullshit?” Across the room she hears Georg laugh but Wendla only flinches.

“Who knows.” She says but her tone is hollow and Anna is only more concerned.

“Wendla are you alright? Because I don’t think you are. What happened to you?” Anna reaches for her hand but Wendla pulls away like she’s been burned.

Wendla glares at her and Anna didn’t think she was capable of the type of ferocity but suddenly the other girl wants to melt into her sneakers.

“I’m fine! You know what, thank you for the soup, but I gotta get home.” Wendla starts standing up, pulling a crumpled bill and few nickels out of her change purse and slamming them on the table weakly.

“Wait Wendla, wait! I’m sorry I won’t talk about anything you don’t want to!” Anna jumps to her feet, following her to the door anxiously.

“Yeah? I bet you’re gonna put this whole thing on snapchat or something tomorrow huh? ‘TBH Wendla Bergmann is such a fucked slut’ or something right?” Wendla spits the words and suddenly she’s raging with so much life Anna can’t believe this same girl who was crumpled in the seat a few minutes ago.

“What? I wouldn’t ever do that! Come on Wendla you know me, I just you look like a mess! Sit down, we don’t have to talk!” Anna protests but Wendla is already at the door.

“Fuck you!” She pulls the door open and slams it in Anna’s face, running down the block. Anna steps outside moving in her direction.

“Wait! Wendla! You don’t even know the way to the subway! Let me just walk you! You’re gonna get lost!” Anna yells out but by then the other girl has rounded the corner and is lost in the darkness of the Lower East Side at night. Anna stands outside for a minute staring at the rushing cars and cracked pavement before she gives up and goes back inside. 

“Damn Anna, you screwed that up.” Georg says after a minute of awkwardness. She throws him a furious look.

“Go fuck yourself. Cover for me until Michael gets here. I’m going to bed.” Anna says taking off her apron and hanging it on the counter. Georg groans as she heads towards the back door to walk up to their apartment.

“I’m studying!” He complains.

“Suck a dick, nerd.” Anna responds and bounds up the stairs.

She lies in bed later, eyes facing the ceiling of her room with the faded stickers on it, and mulls it all over. 

Where did she go wrong? She wonders as she goes over the conversation again and again.

That night her dreams are stressful and dark.

 

On Monday she has mostly put the incident out of her mind. But it’s when she’s heading to her locker fifth period that she sees Wendla again. She is standing beside Anna’s locker, she can’t believe she still remembers where it is after them not speaking for so long. Her hair is cleaned and braided neatly in a french braid, her face clean of make up. She wears a simple white t shirt and jeans and looks as foreign to the girl from the Friday night as possible. Her backpack slung over one shoulder and her sneakered feet squeaking on the linoleum ground.

“Hey.” She says softly and Anna turns to meet her gaze.   
“Hey, what’s up?” She responds casually as if all of that hadn’t even happened.

“I’m sorry about Friday night. I-I was just going through something and I took it out on you.” Wendla looks sincere and Anna chooses to give her a smile.

“It’s fine, I could tell something bad had happened. All forgiven.” Anna mimes wiping her hands clean and closes her locker, slipping her French binder into her bag.

“Anna, you’re not-not gonna tell anyone what happened right?”

Anna stops. So that’s what this is about? Protecting her rep. She should’ve known.

“Yeah sure. I promise. I gotta head to lunch.” She says grudgingly and swings on her backpack, heading down the hall. Wendla follows. 

“Hey, I’m really sorry. You meant so well and I was such a bitch.” She touches Anna’s shoulder and the other girl turns around. “Do you wanna hang out or something? So I can make it up to you?”

Anna considers for a second, and then smiles, that bright natural smile. “Alright, wanna eat lunch together? I know a nice spot in the halls.”

“Cool.” Wendla responds.

They sit pressed up against the lockers, their bagged lunches on their knees, catching up. Anna had forgotten how much she missed Wendla’s laugh and the way she could describe things. How she saw the world through such a strange yet beautiful lense. Like everything was in an art film.

“So did your parents freak when you shaved your head?” Wendla eventually asks. Anna laughs loudly, throwing her head backwards into the metal.

“Yeah! They lost their shit! My mom wouldn’t talk to me for like a week. It was the biggest rift!” Anna responds and Wendla’s eyes widen.

“Why’d the let you do it then?” She asks.

“They didn’t. I did it in the bathroom. Georg watched the door.” 

“Holy shit. My mama would have killed me. I can’t imagine doing something like that.” Wendla says truthfully.

“Yeah, I mean they did kill me.” Anna tells her, remembering the shit show it all had been. “My bubbe deadass said I was bringing her back to the camps. They literally compared me shaving my head to the fucking Nazis. After Georg got his letter for Princeton they calmed down and the attention shifted as per usual. But things are still mad tense.”

Wendla laughs softly. “That’s crazy. I really like it though. You look so cool.”

“Thanks,” Anna says blushing just ever so slightly.

“I wish I could do something like that.” Wendla confides. “But my mama is so strict. I mean not like Martha’s parents but you know…” She trails off softly.

“We’ve got to have you do something crazy. I’ll figure it out. Do some cool teenage stuff. Like Ferris Bueller or something.” Anna jokes.

“Thanks but I’m no Ferris Bueller.” Wendla tells her.

“No, you’re not. You’re Cameron, dumbass, or Sloane at best. I’m Ferris Bueller, I even have a buzzkill for a sibling.” Wendla laughs at that comment, the idea of Anna as a young Matthew Broderick is ludacris and both know. Anna fiddles with the fringe on her baggy jeans and Wendla hugs her legs to her chest. “But seriously we should hang out more.”

“Yeah, sure.” Wendla responds. “I’ll text you.”

“Totally.”

 

And she keeps her word. The girls start having lunch together every day. They walk to the subway together, text late into the night. Anna brings her to the deli a few times, makes her some food for real. Wendla takes her all the way uptown to her house in Riverdale and to her bedroom where they blast rock music and dance on her bed and get yelled at by her mom. It’s like old times Anna thinks, though maybe better. More intimate and sweeter, without the other girls as a buffer.

“You’re the only person I can really talk to.” Wendla texted her once in the middle of the night.

“Same here.” Anna had responded with a smile, clutching her phone to her chest and her head slammed against her pillow. 

She thinks about Wendla so much. When her head is bent over her homework, when she’s walking to school, when certain songs come up on her spotify, at night when she’s got a bit of an itch to scratch, always. Georg won’t stop teasing her until she tosses a textbook at him to make him go away. 

In mid-May she texts her early in the morning to get dressed and go outside.

Anna is standing out there, grabbing her hand and giggling as Wendla stares on confused.

“Let’s do something wild.” Anna says laughing, her recently growing in blonde hair catching the sun’s light. 

They cut school and head to the High Line, before Wendla’s mother can even wake up to notice. The whole train ride there Wendla muses anxiously, that she’s never done something like this, what if a cop sees, what will happen? Anna just strokes her hand and smiles.

The view is beautiful, Manhattan lit golden and the Hudson River looking like a blown glass. It’s mostly free of tourists as it’s so early and a weekday and they walk it for hours. Wendla has never been, she eventually admits and Anna feels it’s her duty to point out every work of art to her and explain the whole history.

“It was a railroad track that got closed and then some fucking gentrifiers or whatever renovated it. And yeah it sucks and we shouldn’t like it but also it’s beautiful and I’m a total nerd for it.” Anna tells her and Wendla laughs.

“I love it when you talk like that. You know so much. I never realized how smart you are.” She says sincerely and Anna puffs with pride.

“I mean, it’s whatever. It’s like a Jew thing you know. Besides you’re way smarter than me. The way you owned Hanschen in Econ yesterday damn, I think you convinced everyone in that room to become a registered communist.” Anna jokes and Wendla slaps her arm, her eyes glistening under the rim of her light pink baseball cap.

Midday they walk to the vendors and Anna insists on paying for lunch. They sit on the big metal wheels, their legs swinging off, and bite into their sandwiches. Anna gets hummus all over her face and can’t help but blush when Wendla wipes it off. 

By the afternoon they’re both exhausted from walking so much and they stop to rest, Wendla takes a quick nap and Anna watches her. When she wakes up she teases her and pretends she had been on snapchat the whole time.

It’s later in the evening, almost dusk, when Wendla says they should dance. Anna blasts a playlist from her phone and she watches Wendla swirling with the strings of lights lining the railing, her dark hair flying out behind her. Her feet move quickly and her arms are spread.

She thinks she wants to do something, reach for her, touch her, hold her, anything. She settles for letting herself be pulled up and dancing along, their hands linked.

“I’m a terrible dancer.” Anna confesses.

“So am I.” Wendla assures her.

That night, they’re sweaty and exhausted and elated. When they get to the subway and they’re forced to hop different trains Anna stares at her one last time before she boards the F train, waiting for the doors to open.

“Today was...awesome.” Wendla tells her truthfully.

“Yeah, we gotta do this more often.” Anna responds

I should kiss her, she thinks, I should lean in and pull her to me and our lips will meet ecstatically like in a movie. That’s what I should do.

But nothing. The doors close and Wendla waves goodbye and Anna is left with the pit of regret in her stomach.

It’s mid June when Wendla calls her up anxiously in the evening.

“I’m gonna text you an address you need to meet me there.” She says in a whispered, taught voice.

“Wendla what’s wrong?” Anna asks, having just awoken from an after school nap.

“I’m fine. Everything is fine. But you’ve gotta come right now.” Wendla says firmly.

“I’m on my way.” Anna responds and is out of her house in a dash.

She shouldn’t have been as shocked as she was when she ends up on 149th in front of the Planned Parenthood. It’s not surprising. The way Wendla had been that night. How she flinched at her touch so often. The anger. The torn dress. But fuck. Shaking every so slightly, Anna went in.

Wendla was sitting on a plastic chair in the waiting room, her face gleaming with sweat.

“No one knows I’m here but you.” She says quietly, sheepishly. “I gave a fake name too.”

“Are you getting…” Anna trails off.

“Please don’t tell my mom. She’d kill me.” Wendla says firmly. “She doesn’t even know I’m not a virgin. And like this, this...oh God.”

Anna can’t think of what to say. The reality is just so different from hers. When she’d come out the first thing her mom had said was, at least I’m never gonna have to pay for your abortion. And that had been a joke, a light hearted normal joke. This was bizarre. Her heart swelled with love and heartbreak for the other girl.

“Your secret’s safe with me. You don’t have to tell me anything.” Anna says firmly, and she wraps the other girl in her arms. They stay there for a moment, leaning awkwardly over the chairs into each other. Wendla’s breathing heavy in her chest and Anna’s nose buried in her hair.

“Thank you for everything.” Wendla finally says, breaking the silence.

“It was my pleasure.” Anna responds.

They sit with their backs against the hard plastic and their heads on the white walls until the nurse finally calls Wendla in and she stands up with knees shaking and walks in.

Anna sits there waiting for Wendla to get out, scrolling aimlessly through her facebook until the light hurts her eyes.

When she gets there she looks drained of color but her feet seem steadier than before, she wipes her brow and runs to embrace her.

“Let’s go get pizza.” Wendla says quietly. “I know a good place near my house.”

“Alright.” Anna says and makes a mental note to text her mom she’ll be out late.

They walk side by side, hands not touching, silent. After they get off the train and roam the streets of Riverdale they’ve still barely said ten words to each other since they left the clinic. Anna doesn’t know what to say. She’s so afraid she’ll make her leave by accident.

The words slip out as they’re rounding the block to the pizza place.

“I love you.” Anna says and Wendla whips her head around like she’s been shocked. “I mean I like you or I like like you but yeah no I really fucking like you.”

Wendla says nothing, just stops in her tracks and stares and Anna thinks she’s going to die in that moment.

“You don’t have to say anything and I’m not gonna let it fuck up our friendship but yeah I just thought you should know I’m in love with you. I don’t want anything from you but it felt wrong to lie about it.” Anna thinks she should stop talking but she can’t keep her stupid mouth shut. “I think I’ve loved you since you came into the deli that night as weird as it sounds and I just want to spend all my time with you. I wanna make you smile and laugh and I don’t want you to get hurt and I just want to like do all I can for you. And it’s all totally selfish but like yeah I’m in love with you. And I don’t think it’s gonna go away.”

Wendla opens and closes her mouth for a second before taking a step forward.

“I-I my God. My God Anna.” She whispers and Anna is sure this is the end of everything. “I want this so badly. I really do. But I’m so fucked up. It would be so fucked up.”

“Wait what?” Anna says and she can’t even put words to what is happening. “Wait you like me too?”

“Yes I like you too! Are you out of your mind? I cut school for you!” Wendla nearly yells and an elderly couple turns towards them uncomfortably. “What the fuck kind of question is that?”

“You like me, but you don’t want to date me?” Anna says slowly, trying to understand.

“Yes, no I just...it would be wrong. It’d be wrong of me.”

“How would it be wrong of you? What the fuck kind of martyr complex is that Wendla? Look I get you’ve been through shit but like you don’t have to punish yourself! I’m here I want to!” Anna spreads her arms out and now people are definitely staring.

“This is so selfish! This is selfish of us both!” Wendla yells back and Anna reaches her hand out slowly.

“So we’re selfish. Let’s be selfish together and not alone.” She wriggles her fingers in the humid Riverdale air. Begging the other girl to take them. “Come on. I love you. What else matters huh?”

Wendla takes another step forward. She grabs Anna’s hand, lightly, like she’s holdng silk.

“You can kiss me if you want to.”

“I want to.”

Lips meet on a corner in the Bronx late at night. Two girls stand solidly on the ground, smiling into each other’s mouths. A million said and unsaid words between them. Anna thinks this is the best of everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked that write more wlw fics you cowards


End file.
